About 11.4 million Americans have enrolled in health insurance through the marketplaces set up under the Affordable Care Act, the White House announced in a video posted to Facebook Tuesday evening.
That’s a “preliminary estimate,” according to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell. The 2015 enrollment period officially ended on Sunday but the Obama administration hadn’t yet released final results. The total includes both new enrollees and people who re-enrolled in both healthcare.gov and the 14 marketplaces being run by individual states.
In the two-minute clip, Burwell is seen telling the president the final results. She said that on Sunday — the final day of open enrollment — more consumers signed up then any other day either this year or last year.
“It gives you some sense of how hungry people were for affordable, accessible health insurance,” Obama said.
In the video, the president also said the law has led to more competition among insurers which is in turn driving down the price of health coverage and improving their quality. “This really was the original vision of the Affordable Care Act,” he said.
The total of 11.4 million is higher than the target set by the administration when enrollment first started in November but lower than the 12 million people the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would sign up in the second year of the insurance marketplaces.
